While I agree the original post was incorrect abut some thing, you are casting the Exalted in to firm a mold. There is no reason not to believe some Exalts were almost totally emotionless, or that the entire range was not covered. Not every Exalt is going to display epic emotion, and that doesn't consider those who are insane for one reason or other. I think this is to much of a simplification, and boxing in of what an Exalt is.
While they had their calculating individuals, the tendency was more towards emotion than away from. Again, a significant inspirational foundation of the Exalted was tales ancient heroes as recounted in epic poetry of antiquity. And from how Exaltation itself is described, it's not out of line to say that having become an Exalt would be a
magnifier, an
intensifier for what the person in question experienced. Exalting is described as (with one notable exception I'll go into in a moment) the
Second Breath, with all the spiritual symbolism of the spirit and soul that breath had in the ancient world. It's essentially described as though the person came alive all over again. A sort of symbolic second birth, into a life that was grander and more intense than the first ever could have been. These aren't the public or fictional perception of the cold and stoic Nietzschean superman who has moved beyond merely human concerns such as grief. These are more akin to Nietzsche's actual values, as a man who once said that "[w]e should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once."
What does this phrase mean?
Contemporary descriptions of heroism and masculinity ( and yes that second part is relevant, even when discussing a notional heroine) since for much of human history the perception of heroism has been directly tied to masculinity and maleness and in a lot of ways, including--more recently--the expectation of not making displays of emotion which came out of beliefs regarding what was appropriate masculine behavior. However, I'm not going into
that whole discussion here, as it's not the proper place for it. Suffice to say that contemporary and near-past sources often treat grief or sorrow as an emotional weakness or a failure. It's called a breakdown, described as falling apart, as something that happens when the normal order of things is interrupted, suspended, or damaged somehow. It's treated like it's a cause for shame, not an integral part of the human psyche/soul/spirit/nature.
I could give more examples, as there's a certain convention which came out of subverting this perception wherein the weeping of an otherwise masculinely-perceived man is used as an emphasis or an intensifier for the circumstances in which he finds himself, but that comes from a certain productivity devouring website to which I'd rather not damn my audience's attention.
Well, stoicism isn't necessarily recent, but it is much more prevalent in media and elsewhere. The Greeks, if I remember correctly, had stoics, it was almost like a cult at the time.
An Exalted with a Temperance of 4 or 5 would probably be a stoic.
Forgot Chrysippus was Greek thanks.
You're all correct there. But the thing is: I'm not talking about the exceptions. I'm talking about the convention, the trend. Stoicism was in part a response to what was perceived as the excessive ways of their forebears and contemporaries. Asceticism was certainly a thing, and it has its place in Exalted, to be sure. Similarly the Exalted host had its share of sociopaths and the like. Again: Havesh the Vanisher. But that was the exception, rather than the rule. For every one Havesh, you had three like Lyta or the Bull in the North or Anjei Marama. For every one of that Elder First Age Sidereal Ascetic whose name I always forget you had a dozen contemporaries whose passions became (likely literally) legend. And that's not even getting into things like the Deathlords. Ghosts in Exalted are sustained and empowered by their passions. Some of the most powerful ghosts in the setting are the ghosts of Exalted, in part (if not in whole) because of the strength and endurance of their passions. Some of it is also because of their inundation in essence, in case of the Deathlords, their merger with the soul-shards of fallen titans, and so forth, but a not insignificant part of why they could endure as ghosts in the first place was the strength of their emotions. These are people who felt strongly enough about things for it to act as a glitch in reality itself. That's the sort of people we're talking about.
While I agree the original post was incorrect abut some thing, you are casting the Exalted in to firm a mold. There is no reason not to believe some Exalts were almost totally emotionless, or that the entire range was not covered. Not every Exalt is going to display epic emotion, and that doesn't consider those who are insane for one reason or other. I think this is to much of a simplification, and boxing in of what an Exalt is.
Still, it is true that on some levels I am oversimplifying matters, but I'm arguing that, to what degree the Exalted host could be spoken of in a general sense, the tendency was for them to be emotionally expressive people more often than they weren't.
Going back to @Dragonbard's comment about high Temperance and stoicism:
Even the stoic among them likely still
felt about it, otherwise there'd be no high-temperance ghosts around. High temperance isn't about not feeling things. It's about
control of how you act on what you feel. And in many cases, temperance can be a form of feeling itself: a desire for justice and rectitude, for a basic
fairness, if not others' conduct, then at least in one's own.
The idea that people should be reserved in their emotions is a relatively recent one, and has it's roots in the grieving period of Queen Victoria when the Prince Consort Albert died.
No, I'm serious. Before that, public displays of emotion were considered normal and healthy, and men's formal-wear came in a variety of different colours and styles, instead of mourning-black. It's had an amazing effect on the Western world.
This is in large part what I was trying to get at. And sorry if this whole spiel feels defensive or like a derail. My concentration in undergrad was in early [i.e: largely pre-Modern--taken in the literary sense rather than the common sense of the word--English Literature, so it's a subject I care quite a bit about. And, well, my own gender issues leave me something of a boundary object where said subject is concerned, so I've always found the subject somewhere between fascinating and aggravating. Also: fun fact, early on in there being gendered child clothing pink was often considered a boy's color (because it was a lighter shade of red, which was considered a strong and masculine shade), and children tended to all be dressed alike before that. Even after for a while. Seriously. Go look and it's surprisingly easy to find images of (I forget which, but) one of the Roosevelt Presidents in a dress as a young boy.
EDIT: It was FDR.
Links:
FDR Grew Up in a Dress: It Wasn't Always Blue for Boys and Pink for Girls
President Roosevelt Wore A Dress: New Exhibit - Wild Gender
History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian
